’Membering Austin Clarke: A Puritan Special Issue
Introduction
On Austin Clarke’s Style
When a writer leaves us, we are left only with fragments to draw upon, pore over, and reassess to hold onto some aspect of his being.
Fiction
Sometimes, A Motherless Child: A Double-Take
They embraced, touching bodies, and slapping each other on the back three times, as if they belonged to an old fraternity of rituals and mystery.
Poetry
hyphen (for Austin ‘Tom’ Clarke 1934 – 2016)
the figure in black called his dangerous act a ‘coup’ the press: ‘outrageous’, ‘audacious’, ‘artistic crime of the century’— I imagine the abyss of New York below his tight-rope
Let Me Stand Up
This poem has Clarke grappling with one the central themes of his later writing: aging.
Essays
Of Kin and Kind
My introduction to Clarke came in a graduate course at McMaster University focusing on “the interpretive frameworks we bring to our interpretations of Canadian texts” and, more broadly, the politics of literary canonization.
Interviews
“Submerging the Politics”: Leslie Sanders Interviews Austin Clarke
Austin, first your memoir, with that wonderful title, Growing up Stupid Under the Union Jack. Why do you say you grew up stupid?
Clarke on Clarke
I became acquainted with Austin’s work through the short stories and essays, primarily from the 1980s and into the 1990s.
